Powerco chief operating officer Richard Krogh said the company had chosen Tasmania for the fuel cell trial because of the high level of support for natural gas in the state.

“In Tasmania we have a State Government committed to growing its energy infrastructure and partnering with Powerco in the roll-out of the new gas distribution network,” Krogh said.

The fuel cells will be used to generate electricity from gas at domestic sites for domestic use.

Powerco has already completed construction of the backbone of Tasmania’s new gas distribution network (known as Stage One) and is making good progress on the first phase of the Stage Two network build.

Stage Two will make natural gas available to 38,500 residential and small commercial properties in the state.

CFCL chief executive officer Brendan Dow said his company now had a broad range of field trial sites in Australia, New Zealand and Germany.

“We expect, over the next few months, to start generating some useful data – and learning a lot – from these trials,” Dow said.

“We know the trials won’t be perfect and we expect some challenges. Trials are all about an opportunity to test our technology in ‘real world’ conditions, and feed back our findings into our ongoing development work, ultimately leading to more reliable fuel cells.”

Powerco and CFCL currently plan to deliver the fuel cell unit to Tasmania in December this year.

Meanwhile, the first unit has been installed at Industrial Research Limited’s premises in Wellington and is undergoing commissioning. IRL will conduct the 12-month trial on this fuel cell unit.